culture

Songhwa Street is located in the Songsin and Sonhwa area, the eastern gateway to Pyongyang.

Spectacular is the street characterized by a magnificent 80-storey apartment house, overhead bridges across the street, different styles of other apartment houses and distinctively built public service facilities.

The 80-storey apartment house, an iconic building of the street, is horizontally in the shape of a starfish in favour of saving energy and its elevations depict soaring fireworks through combination of horizontal and vertical elements.

The street is very distinctive in the light of combination of apartment buildings and lower-floor service networks of them.

Semicircular apartment blocks and rhythmically circular lower-floor service networks are linked with the centre of each network designed like a natural courtyard to form beautiful structure and the courtyard is landscaped to be used as a rest space.

In the service networks buildings are connected directly with each other or by the overhead bridges, and therefore visitors can go directly to other service networks without having to go out.

Good species of trees, flowering shrubs and ground-cover plants are growing on roofs, ground floors and other places, and the artificial ponds and waterfalls to which advanced technologies are applied and resting places go well with each other to present a landscape as beautiful as a picture.

In the evening, the street presents an enchanting view by dint of bright illuminations.

At the time of groundbreaking, the area was as good as a vast plain. Then it underwent a great change with the construction of a large architectural group with modern high-rise apartment buildings and skyscrapers built along the street in a row, in distinctive harmony with public service facilities, overhead bridges and ornamental structures.

The street was wonderfully built in just one year after the groundbreaking ceremony took place in March 2021 under the energetic guidance of the Workers’ Party of Korea which intends to provide citizens in the capital city with stable and civilized living conditions.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un examined as many as over 1 000 mock-ups. In the course of that he gave instructions on remodelling the elevations of apartment houses to meet modern aesthetic taste, increasing or reducing the height of buildings while thickly connecting the ground floors and installing overhead bridges in the style of a building extending across the street.

The street was inaugurated with splendour in April 2022 to mark the 110th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung.